


Where Are We Now

by zenikkuma



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Fluff, M/M, ZaDr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22743943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenikkuma/pseuds/zenikkuma
Summary: zim and dib do some stargazing and reflect on their relationship and, spoiler alert, its pretty fucking gay(this is a wip so more chapters will be coming but its more of a really long one shot tbh)
Relationships: Dib/Zim (Invader Zim)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 55





	1. I

"How did we get here?" Dib questioned. 

Zim turned his head to look at Dib who was laying beside him and staring upward. With a slightly baffled expression, Zim responded, "With our legs, you drooling moron. I swear, you ask some of the most perceivable questions." 

Remembering that he was talking to someone who takes almost everything literally, Dib sighed and covered his face with his hand as he tried to explain what he meant.  
"No, it's a figure of speech. I mean- how did we become friends? Did the stars somehow align? Did some God decide to fuck around and make us tolerate each other? You have to admit, it's hard to believe we were mortal enemies when we first met all those years ago."

"'All those years ago'? It's only been five Earth orbits since Zim arrived. That's nothing on Irk," Zim retorted and chuckled.

Growing somewhat frustrated, Dib found himself exhaling with more force as he was left explaining things to the alien once more.  
"Most humans live for ninety or a hundred years at the most. Five years is maybe five or six percent of our lifespan. Besides, time is relative. For a ten year old, five years is half of their life at that point. Five may seem like a small amount to you, but it's a lot more for us."

"Well that's stupid," Zim said with dissapointed yet unsurprised voice, which Dib pretty much always expected every time he talked about humans as a species. Then again, what other response would you expect from a race of aliens with god complexes.

"Well, it's not like there's anything we can do about it," Dib shrugged, putting his attention back to the stars in the sky overhead. 

Zim hummed in agreement and let his thoughts go off on a tangent like he usually did when things got quiet.  
He still couldn't fathom why the Dib-human would want to stargaze with him. It's not like they hadn't seen every star in the human's Milky Way galaxy already, but he went with it anyways because hey, why the hell not? It wasn't like he had plans, and he'd do anything to get out of watching another episode of whatever show GIR was binge watching again. He swore to himself that he wasn't going to allow anymore shows or movies with audio that went higher than a hundred decibels, but saying no to GIR was like telling a human child not to touch the items on the shelves in a grocery store.  
Though it was unexpected, Zim couldn't truthfully say that lying on the roof of Dib's house and talking with him wasn't... unpleasant. However, he would never admit that even if his life depended on it.

Breaking the silence and Zim’s wandering thoughts, Dib spoke up again. “How do you think the world is going to end?”

“You’re going to have to elaborate,” Zim replied without missing a beat.

“Earth specifically. The human race and all that junk.”

The alien hummed before answering. “Well, I believe there’s three most likely ways your species will die off. Either your galaxy’s Sun is going to expand and increase its mass to the point that it engulfs your own planet and everything before it,” Zim explained, his hand raised in the crisp air in a fist with one claw pointed out, “your species will destroy its own environment causing death, famine, and no shelter,” another claw stuck out, “or you morons will get all, as you put it, ‘your panties in a knot’, and release bombs and other deadly weapons, killing people in mass and destroying the planet in the process. It would probably put it into a nuclear winter,” Zim finished, all three of his claws out as he’d been listing his thoughts.

Dib blinked, his head turned and attention fully on Zim. “Wow. Okay, I honestly wasn’t expecting a real answer. Figured you’d say you’d kill us all with some world ending death ray or some shit like that.”

“Oh, I could definitely end your species at any time I wanted,” Zim responded matter-of-factly while he smirked and went to lay his arm down on his abdomen. “Zim just- doesn’t feel like doing it anymore as much as he used to. Not that I care about this dirt ball of a planet, no way! Not in a shmillion years! Zim is just… lazy. Yeah, very lazy.” Zim could feel his claws clamming up beneath his gloves. Curse these feelings-- that he definitely does not have!

“It sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself more than me,” Dib said, lifting a brow. Dib turned his body to face Zim and propped his head up on his palm with his elbow lifting his upper half at an angle.

Zim flustered, sitting up and hugging his legs as he pulled them toward his chest. He let his head rest on his knees as he went on, trying to avoid the embarrassment that came whenever he spoke with the Dib-human.  
“Five whole orbits and I still find myself in denial,” he confessed with an almost heartbroken sigh. Zim laughed to himself a bit, “It’s pathetic, really. I thought I could be the perfect irken invader. Zim is no better than a food service drone.”

Dib’s expression soured and he looked away as he sighed. Even though it had been a couple years since Zim confessed to Dib about being defective and having to go on trial on Judgementia, it was apparent the the whole ordeal still affected him. He remembered the day Zim came over via busting through Dib’s bedroom window and told him everything.

“Things aren’t like I thought they would be, Dib. And to be truthful, it terrifies Zim,” he muttered. “I’m defective and my Tallest don’t care about what I do. I’ve had a lot of time by myself to think after that florpus hole fiasco. I found myself reflecting more since I couldn’t distract myself with ‘reporting’ to my Tallest,” Zim said, using air quotes with the ‘reporting’ part. He turned over and looked at Dib for the first time in what felt like forever, even if it had been a minute at the most.

Dib's face was contorted into an expression Zim couldn't understand, and it enraged him. He hated when he didn't know things, and the last thing he wanted to do is ask this... inferior species... for knowledge. What was that human feeling? Was that pity? Sympathy? Worry? It’s not like Zim would even know; he never felt like learning about these human’s worthless emotions was worth his time, so he didn’t.  
Eventually, he ended up exploding like a Mentos in a diet Coke as usual. He looked upwards and threw his hands up as his voice became shrill with anger.  
“GAH! Stop looking at Zim with that… that FACE! It’s- URGH! I DESPISE it! I absolutely LOATHE it!” Zim yelled, his hands moving from being in the air in exasperation to rubbing from his temples and all around his eyes.

Despite having been just yelled at, Dib looked down and giggled to himself. “Never expected you to be the type to think about their actions. Hell, I consider you to be the epitome of impulse.” Dib laughed softly and looked back up at Zim’s watchful eyes before continuing, “Five years and you still somehow surprise me at every corner. Talking to you is like getting an uppercut to the jaw with surprise, then getting kicked in the back with another shock. And just when you think it’s over, you pull one over me and it feels like someone knocked both my knees out with a metal baseball bat.”

Zim found himself to be slightly confused. He had dropped some of the heaviest weight he’d been carrying on him, yelled in his face, and Dib was unbothered by it. Even giving dumb human metaphors!  
“What are you trying to say, Dib-stink?” Zim asked, squinting with his brows furrowed, even though he didn’t have eyebrows. There was no point in him having brow muscles if he didn’t have eyebrows, but it was just one of those biological things he did his best not to think too hard about unless he wanted a brain aneurysm. 

“Zim, you might see yourself as a failure to your militaristic empire, or maybe you think that you’re the best there is around. Either way doesn’t really matter to me.” Dib turned to gaze back up at the stars above them and continued, “What does matter for me, is that you are the only thing on this shithole of a planet worth sticking around for. You’re like a really good T.V. show, except it doesn’t end. There’s always something new and different to explore.”

Eyes widened and posture shooting completely straight, Zim was stricken with disbelief as he heard Dib speak. He felt his artificial Irken blood rush to his cheeks, turning a slight magenta color and growing warm in contrast to the cool breeze around them and immediately hid his face away from sight between his knees again. Much to his distaste, Dib only laughed at his futile attempts to hide his emotions. Not like he had any of th- oh, who was he fooling? He had to face it; he had... feelings. Disgusting, horrendous, awful, smelly, stupid feelings. There were several more words that could be used to describe his opinion on feelings, but let’s keep it at five for everyone’s sake.  
“Since when were you so interested in Zim as an acquaintance? Last time I recall, you wanted all my guts sprawled out on an autopsy table,” Zim said, still refusing to look at the smelly human as he talked.

“You’re not the only one who’s changed,” Dib answered. “Sure, maybe I do sometimes think about what it would be like to dissect you, having your weird alien blood all on my surgical glove covered hands, your guts wiggling around in between my fingers at the muscles contract and-” stopping mid-sentence, Dib tried to catch himself before things got too awkward and disturbing.  
He let out a nervous laugh and rubbed the back of his neck as he did his best to recover, “Uh, you can just- forget about that last part. But what I’m trying to say is that I’ve reconsidered my values too. I might not have been in a situation exactly like yours, but I’ve had plenty of time to reflect. Seriously, my physics class is boring as shit.” Dib cleared his throat now that he finally got out what he wanted to say.

This wasn’t the first time Dib had talked about his weird fantasies of cutting Zim open as some experiment, so Zim didn’t pay much mind to his rambling. If anything, it was nice to hear someone was so interested in him, despite how morbid it was.  
Zim relaxed his body and sprawled back out on the cold concrete with a frustrated sigh. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when he’d picked up the habit, but Zim found himself letting out deep breaths when he was stressed as if he was letting something go when he did. It’s probably something he got from the Dib-thing, but it did help a bit so he supposed it didn’t really matter that much.  
“So,” Zim started, “where are we now?”

“On my roof, dumbass.”

With a swift punch in the shoulder, Dib chuckled as he retaliated, “Hey, you did the same thing we me! It’s only fair.”

“‘Fair’ my ass,” Zim responded with a roll of his fake human eyes. “I’m going to destroy you one of these days.”

“I’d like to see you try, space boy,” Dib said, a wide smile spreading across his face. Insults and death threats were something that he found to be special between him and Zim. Sure, the two of them found comfort and nostalgia in pretty unusual things, but then again, they were unusual themselves. One being an alien from a whole other planet in a different galaxy, the other being a clone of the world’s most well known scientist. They were both abnormal to say the least.

Suddenly, an alarm went off, startling the two of them and tearing them away from their thoughts. Dib, who immediately knew what it was, sat up and reached over to a pocket inside his signature (and atrocious looking) trench coat and pulled out his cellphone. It was his weekend night alarm. Call him a goody two shoes, but he preferred actually having enough sleep to function at school even if he didn’t really care about what was going on. It was better than trying to deal with sleep deprivation in the middle of class like he used to when his depression got really bad.

“What’s that about? Did someone call you? Is the Dib-father on the other end?” Zim asked quizzically. He had sat up as well and was looking at Dib like he was going to stare a hole right through him if he didn’t get answers.

Oh right, irkens didn’t need to sleep, did they? Zim explained it to him once, but that was before he cared enough to pay attention so…  
“It’s just my nine o’ clock alarm. I like to sleep at a reasonable time during the weekends, you know? I’d rather not fuck up my entire sleep schedule in two days,” Dib explained.

Zim let out an unnecessarily loud laugh. “You pathetic humans and your ‘sleep’. I still can’t believe you have to recharge every night just to function! Your species aren’t just a bunch of clowns, they’re the whole circus!” 

Trying and failing miserably to be upset, Dib let out a weird snort-laugh through his nose as he kept his mouth shut. Okay, he had to admit to himself that the clown part was too good to not laugh at. 

Hearing Dib struggle to keep his laughter in only made the situation more comedic, and eventually the two of them were laughing uncontrollably with each other, leaving Dib breathless and gasping for air as he curled over and going on about how his sides were hurting. It was something Zim also hated to admit to himself, but watching Dib laugh and be genuinely happy made him feel… good? It didn’t feel like the pleasure he would get from destroying something; it was something completely different. The gratification from his incredibly evil plans was more like receiving an award, while seeing the one person that really mattered to him be happy was completely different. It was a soft and warm feeling he felt right in the center of his thorax. At first it was revolting and was something he found himself utterly repulsed by, but as time went on it sort of grew onto him like all the other things he gets from the Dib-thing.

Eventually they caught their breaths (well, mostly Dib taking deep breaths and putting his middle and index finger together with his thumb and moving it downwards in front of him as he exhaled to calm himself down as if he were meditating, but Zim was there too) with the occasional chuckle between the two of them as they refocused.

“Ho-oh-kay, s-so do you want to stay over t-tonight,” Dib stuttered, coughing in between words to prevent himself from going into another laughing fit. “Or do you- do you have things you need to take care of at h-home?” Dib asked, quickly swiping away at a tear that escaped as he was laughing.

It wasn’t a problem for Zim to compose himself enough to properly speak, but his voice did sound different when he was grinning wildly.  
“It’s no problem, I’ll just have to send a message telling GIR to hold down the fort and not destroy too much while I’m gone for the night.”

Dib forced out one last cough and continued after he cleared his throat.  
“Okay, awesome. I’ll let my dad know and you can pull out a pair of pajamas from my closet or dresser if you want to wear some tonight.” Dib pushed his hand against the roof and got up from where he was sitting, leading the way to his bedroom window on the side of the house with Zim right behind him. Yeah, it was stupid and dangerous way to get on the roof but it’s not like he was going to actually slip and fall. What kind of idiot would do tha- oh god fucking damn it.

Losing his footing against the third floor’s outer platform and grip slipping from his hand, time seemed to slow down as he started to fall backwards toward the ground.

Panic immediately flooding Zim’s system, he screamed out to Dib as his PAK legs activated and jumped over the roof’s ledge 

It was like pure instinct as the metal legs launched toward the falling human. Within a fraction of a second, both of Zim’s hands reached out for Dib’s arms and gripped them as tightly as he could the moment they made contact with his wrists. Knowing he has a strong grasp on the human, the arachnid-like legs darted to the house’s outer walls, each one digging their tips into the cement with as much force as possible. 

The world around them seemed to pause as they came to a stop. Their breaths were ragged and the adrenaline was definitely still flowing through them. Even if it all happened within a few seconds, time seemed to have slowed down when Zim caught Dib. The dangling human looked down at the ground beneath them, then laughed nervously as he turned his gaze back toward the irken that saved him from probably a few broken bones and tons of bruises… and possibly death.

Zim exhaled with closed eyes for a moment and pulled one of Dib’s arms upward to bring him close enough for Zim to wrap his arms around the boy’s waist and carry him to a stable surface- or anywhere that wasn’t in the middle of the air for that matter. For such a tiny alien, Zim was ridiculously strong; his grip alone gave Dib some noticeable marks and there were three dots with blood slowly trickling out where the tips of his claws broke the skin.  
“Next time you call for Zim for this gazing of the stars,” Zim began, “let’s do it on a roof that isn’t curved and is a bitch to get up and down from without possibly dying.”

Slowly and gradually, Zim’s PAK legs retracted from the wall they had lodged themselves in and crawled down to safety. 

Once the first metal leg had touched the ground, Zim immediately let go of Dib to watch him fall beneath him. He physically could not be this nice to the human for too long; it made him sick to his squeedilyspooch. By not giving so much as a second for the Dib-human to prepare for such a fall, he ended up landing on his bottom and cursed as the pain ran up his spine.

“A little warning would’ve been nice,” Dib said with a sharp inhale

“Would you like to fall three stories up again without me catching you this time?” Zim’s snide remark was snarky as usual.

“If it meant you having some manners, then sure,” Dib said as he rubbed his lower back. His response was chock full of attitude and sarcasm as Zim’s was.

The metal spider legs returned to their home in Zim’s PAK as he paid no more attention to Dib, focusing on dusting his shoulders and chest off. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Get up so we can go inside, stinky.”

With a scoff and a “sure, whatever” of his own, Dib pushed himself up back to his feet and head toward his front door with Zim trailing behind. Though they bickered back and forth most of the time, their insults and rude remarks held no malice in them. It was easy for them to pick up when the other truly meant what they said as the two already knew the other pretty well. The same principle applied to their sarcasm.


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow! my stupid ass really waited like. almost 5 whole months before updating this shid bc i never actually finished what was SUPPOSED to be a "oneshot" and kept procrastinating on completing it. anyways if i ever finish this motherfucker of a fic i'll put in another chapter just to make it easier to read bc i know it's annoying to read long ass chapters dfgksdjshhjkd

Once they were approaching the front door of the Membrane household, Zim did a quick lookover of his human disguise to see if anything was noticeably out of place. To be fair, it really didn’t matter since Dib’s father didn't believe in aliens for a second and Gaz couldn’t care less about whether or not Zim was a human as long as he didn’t interrupt her gaming. Still, it felt better to have the wig and human contacts on when he was outside. 

Dib opened the door and stepped to the side in the direction it swung to give room for Zim to walk past him. He made an exaggeratingly polite gesture with his arms, mocking the way couples will allow their partner to enter first.

“After you, your highness,” Dib insisted with a fake European accent to go along with it.

Zim scoffed, rolling his eyes as he walked past the human. “And they say chivalry is dead.”

Dib laughed to himself as he shut the door behind him and slipped his signature trench coat off and onto a coat hanger as he shouted downward to where his father’s laboratory was, “Da-a-ad! Is it okay if Zim stays over tonight?”

“Sure, son! Just don’t stay up too late!” a voice muffled by floorboards answered.

He turned back to face Zim and stepped towards the kitchen as he spoke, “You can head over to my room and get settled, I’m just gonna grab some snacks and soda for us.”

The Irken nodded and headed up the stairs, activating his communicative device from his PAK that hovered over his head and held it in one hand once it was within reach. it was static for a moment as he waited for it to connect to GIR, and paused his walking once he saw the little robot minion on the screen.

“GIR! I’ll be spending the night over at the Dib-human’s house. Make sure Minimoose doesn’t get into trouble and under no circumstances are you allowed to throw any parties,” Zim ordered. “Got that?”

“AFFIRMATIVE!” GIR said as his eyes flashed red as he saluted to Zim. As quickly as they’d turned red, they shifted back to their normal cyan as he smiled and started to wave frantically, “Have fun, master!” There was a squeak as GIR waved and just barely within view of the screen was Minimoose’s head and antlers poking in from the corner. 

Zim felt a grin crept onto his face as he disconnected the line and continued walking as he let go of the device to allow it to be pulled back into his PAK. As troublesome GIR could be sometimes, he was a loyal servant and something about him made Zim feel appreciated. Maybe it was the fact that GIR had been sticking around since day one, maybe it was his energetic and child-like happiness he expressed over small or simple things, or maybe it was because they were both abnormal and considered “broken” or “defective” by their superiors. It was probably impossible to truly know why, but either way, he wouldn’t give up GIR for any other information retrieval unit. 

The alien opened the door and before fully entering the room, he glanced at the amount of clutter in the room. For a teenage boy, Dib’s room wasn’t that bad in terms of cleanliness. Zim had certainly seen much worse; he lived with GIR after all and he had his own lazy moments as well. 

Zim took a step in and made a beeline for Dib’s dresser, grabbing the pair of pajama pants he always liked to borrow whenever he was over for the night. It was navy blue and covered in little white ghosts, and the material was a soft, fluffy polyester fabric that warmed Zim up whenever he wore them. Occasionally, he was tempted to steal them for himself, but he’d figured he would probably forget about them and have to wear some other pajama bottoms instead when he came over for the night. So, despite his instinct to take whatever it was that he wanted, he kept the pants in the room of the rightful owner.

Before putting the bottoms on, Zim threw it across his arm and went into Dib’s absolutely disorganized closet and grabbed the closest tee shirt he could grab. The one he ended up with had a yellow outline of a smiley face printed onto it, but the eyes were crossed out into X’s and the smile was slightly squiggly with a tongue sticking out on the far right. Above it had “NIRVANA” printed on it, which Zim recognized to be one of the bands Dib got really into in seventh grade. 

Flipping the shirt over, printed underneath a thin line were the words “ _ FLOWER SNIFFIN / KITTY PETTIN / BABY KISSIN / CORPORATE ROCK WHORES _ ”. Zim chuckled to himself, remembering all the times Dib was sent to the principal’s office for the profanity on it when he forgot to put on a jacket to cover the text. Dib was intelligent, but all that genius came at the price of his wisdom and common sense. 

Taking both the shirt and pants and lazily folding them, Zim put them off to rest on Dib’s bed as he went to take off his disguise and invader uniform. The irken sat on the edge of the mattress’ side and allowed his PAK’s mechanical arms to remove his wig and periwinkle colored contacts as he kicked off his boots and flung his gloves indifferently into a pile at the foot of the bed. Zim shrugged off the tunic after pulling it over his head, tossing it with the rest of his discarded appearance modifiers.

Tugging the pajamas on and tying the drawstring into a neat bow at the waist, Zim pulled the pants up and flattened his antennae against himself as he tugged the band shirt over his head, slipping his arms through either sleeve. Even though they were slightly big on him, the baggy feeling from the clothes made him feel better for some reason. Even though his normal uniform wasn’t uncomfortable. it felt nice to wear something that didn’t feel as if it were somewhat glued to his body.

At that moment, the human walked in with an armful of party sized chip bags, a two liter bottle of Dr. Pepper in the crook of his elbow, and various candies being held in his arms along with one being carried in his mouth. Dib kicked the door closed once he was out of the doorway and dropped most of the junk food onto the already messy carpet. 

“I got us some snacks,” Dib announced.

Zim looked at the fallen edible items on the carpet and back to Dib with the rest he still held, “I can see that.”

Dib put the bottle of soda onto the dresser as he passed it and dropped all his weight onto his bed next to Zim, tearing open a bag of potato chips in the process. “Do you want me to put something on?” he asked, reaching for the remote as his bed stand. “They’re doing some reruns of Mysterious Mysteries that we could watch, unless you just want me to put it on a random channel for background noise.”

“You are the only person Zim has ever witnessed to actually enjoy that bogus and false belief ridden show, but sure, go ahead and play it on your primitive Earth display box.”

“Weird flex but okay,” Dib said, paying no attention to Zim usual gibes. With that, he pointed the remote to his mini-television he’d gotten for his sixteenth birthday and flipped to the channel that was playing the reruns. Alternatively, Dib could’ve gotten his laptop and they could watch something on YouTube or some streaming website, but he honestly was too lazy to take it out and put it back. Besides, the television made for some good white noise on sleepless nights. 

Lucky for him, the episode playing was the one about the mothman, one of Dib’s favorite cryptids. All was quiet besides the talking from the television’s built-in speakers, until Zim asked out of the blue, “Does the Dib-human plan to continue schooling after he graduates?”

The human stuttered at the sudden question, but did his best to answer, “Uh- I mean, I’m not entirely sure yet. Like, I kinda want to do something with psychology but my dad probably wants me to be a scientist like him so I can continue his ‘legacy,’” Dib said with a hint of derision.

“Zim takes it that you still have this ‘beef’ with your parental unit.”

“Well, yes and no. I know he loves me and only wants what’s best for me, but I can’t help but feel like he’s giving me what he would’ve wanted at my age, not what I actually want.”

“Can’t you just leave? You’ve been existing for almost eighteen Earth years. From what I remember of Earth culture, eighteen is the age human offspring are allowed to separate from their guardians.”

“That’s kind of my problem. I’m… afraid to go out into the world on my own- at least not yet. I don’t want to try to be independent only to go crawling back here,” Dib explained, gesticulating towards his surroundings, “It would only make my dad’s ego even bigger and my confidence so small that you’d need a microscope to see it.”

Zim scoffed at the human. “Since when do you care about how someone thinks of you? Dib, you kept up with your ghosts and monsters for years. Even when your father shot you down time and time again, you still pursued this ‘paranormal stuff’ because you enjoyed it.”

“I guess you have a point, I just don’t want him to be disappointed because he thought I would’ve grown out of my interest in the paranormal by now,” Dib said, looking down and fidgeting with his fingers as he continued rambling. “It was one of the few things I really felt I could cling onto when I was a kid because he was so busy with his work. Hell, we could only go out to dinner as a family once a year! Now that he’s back in the picture, I thought I’d be different by now. I just… want him to be proud of me.” Dib smiled to himself as a pained laugh escaped him. “It feels like I care too much about people who don’t even think about me.”

Zim felt a sinking feeling in his squeedilyspooch as he looked into Dib’s subdued eyes behind the thick lenses of his round glasses. Seems like it was Dib’s turn to be sad tonight, and sympathy wasn’t one of Zim’s strong points. He looked at the human, who seemed to be on the verge of tears and Zim felt compelled to say something to comfort the poor human before he became a depressed mess.

He looked at Dib’s shaking hands before looking off to the side with an attempt to make his former rival not such a sad mess. “If… it’s any consolation,” Zim started, closing his eyes to focus on his next few sentences, “Zim admires your dedication to the things that you enjoy and how much you care. It’s one of the things I always found to be interesting with you, Dib-human. Even though most people call it crazy or stupid, you refuse to conform to your idiotic society’s normalities. Instead, you do what makes you happy. To that, I owe you my respect,” Zim said with a slight nod.

Dib’s gaze went to Zim, his expression one of disbelief as the last thing he expected from Zim were words of comfort and praise. He squinted and clenched his jaw while his eyes watered, the tears beginning to pool on his bottom eyelid. 

“Y-you… you really mean it?” Dib questioned with a voice cracking more than a pubescent middle schooler.

Zim stayed silent long enough for Dib to doubt him just before he responded.

“...Yeah. 

With his eyes nearly squeezed shut and arms reaching out to Zim, Dib wrapped around the alien’s torso and gripped tightly on the fabric that rested on the small of his back. Not knowing how to react, Zim froze where he sat as his former rival sobbed into his chest. The tears soaked into the shirt he’d taken from Dib’s closet as he cried on Zim’s chest and the liquid began to seep through and burn the alien’s skin, though he paid no mind to it as the fact that he was being held was more of a shock than the crying. Tiny human children crying? Normal. Unremarkable. Nothing out of the ordinary. Dib crying? Admittedly a bit out of character for someone who usually got frustrated and screamed before shedding a tear.

Zim’s mind raced as he tried to think of what someone is supposed to do in a situation like this. Push them away? No, that would only make the human feel bad. Or worse, make the entire situation awkward. Embrace the human as well? No, he might not want to be held as it may make him feel trapped. Come on, there’s got to be something humans do when this happens!

Remembering something from some Earth movie he’d watched with GIR, Zim lowered his hands that were hanging in the air and placed them on Dib’s back, rubbing in small circles. Zim slowly leaned into the embrace, feeling the warmth of the human’s skin and closing his eyelids. He rested his head on Dib’s own, the two of them fitting perfectly together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

“I- I don’t know if you’ll ever feel the same, I don’t know if you’ll even understand,” Dib began, turning his head away from Zim’s chest to make himself audible and pausing occasionally to sniffle, “but despite being able to leave and fuck off to some other planet on the other side of the universe, you’ve always stuck around on this dirtwad,” he said between choked up sobs. “I’m so thankful for that. It’s so stupid, but you’re probably the only reason why I haven’t jumped off a building already,” he admitted with a sadistic laugh, then looked up at Zim. 

Zim, respectively, looked down at the hurt teenager. He gazed into his vibrant amber eyes as Dib did the same with his own magenta ocular implants.

“Despite being here for many years now, Zim admits that he still struggles with understanding... ‘e-moh-shuns,’ but I believe it would be accurate to say that I… feel the same way.”

Dib hummed with acknowledgement, then leaned closer into Zim. It was strange how cold he was but it’s not like Dib knew enough about irken biology to understand why. Maybe it was because of his guilty pleasure with abnormal things, but Zim was something that always caught Dib’s eye in terms of physical appearance. Comparing Zim to anyone else would be an unfair match in terms of how intriguing they were to Dib.

As time passed, the two grew quiet and let themselves lay together in the embrace without speaking, with the only sounds in the room being the background noise of the television and hum of the air conditioner. Zim relaxed his body, releasing the tension in his muscles that he had unintentionally and allowed his antennae to tilt downward, lightly brushing themselves against Dib’s head. Dib did the same with his own body and started to glide his hands up and down along what felt like Zim’s spine- or at least the irken equivalent. 

Finally the silence was broken. “It’s getting late,” Dib said with a glance at his phone’s clock. “We should probably get some sleep.”

“ _ You _ should get your sleep, simple human,” Zim corrected.

“Psh, whatever.” 


End file.
